Why are the edit boxes for character names so much smaller than displayed character names

It's a little odd that when you go to edit a character name, the edit box becomes tiny compared to the previously displayed character name. This makes correct editing more difficult as you cannot see the whole character name that you are editing. See below:

Me too. I just happened to be editing something else for a Get Satisfaction problem and decided to finally post it. This really sucks for animation, like The Simpsons, which never has a large enough box. There is no reason the box cannot grow to the size of the input, even if that means wrapping text.

Just so I understand the issue before bringing it to our tech teams' attention, are you referring to the size of the box where you are making the correction (in red) verses the uncorrected item (in green)?

In the underlying HTML, the element has a "name" attribute with a value like for example "o.1.cast.existing.1.edit.char" (where the second "1" refers to the serial number of specific item to be edited). The "size" attribute has a value of "20", which refers to the number of normal-width capital letters in the role description, or something like that. We'd be inclined to assume that 20 is enough, but apparently it is not always so, because sometimes the data field contains more than just a character's name but also the segment identifier, or multiple characters' names separated by forward slashes.

Yes, that's it. It would also help if the box could grow as more text as entered. I edit "The Simpsons" and it becomes a hassle because the main cast, particularly Dan Castellaneta, play multiple characters and easily fills the small edit box.

I asked myself that same question several months ago. I even looked at the numbers in order to suggest a new default width, but ultimately I didn't post the results here because I felt I was the only one who suffered it and that the staff had other priority issues to fix.

Including spaces, the character box currently displays inputs of around 20 characters long (since most people use proportional fonts, actual number varies depending on the entered text). That length can accommodate about 91.3% of all the character names in the database (90.1% if we exclude the 12% of acting credits that has no character name); in other words, 1 out of 11 character names will exceed the visible limit. Ideally the box should grow as more text is entered but, in the meantime, If we could extend the width to, say, 60 characters, only 1 out of around 720 character names would be "trimmed".

(I could recalculate using newest data, but I don't think the results would be much different)As of 22 Dec 2017 (from 32,614,967 acting credits):

By decade:--- [Pre-1890]: 100.0% non-blank characters (6), of which 16.7% are longer than 20 chars ~ Gilbert Domm in Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1878)--- [1890-1899]: 78.3% non-blank (844), of which 3.7% are long.--- [1900-1909]: 54.3% non-blank (4,832), of which 9.2% are long.--- [1910-1919]: 70.5% non-blank (149,307), of which 16.2% are long.--- [1920-1929]: 67.3% non-blank (119,865), of which 10.3% are long.--- [1930-1939]: 82.6% non-blank (270,397), of which 14.1% are long.--- [1940-1949]: 84.1% non-blank (283,583), of which 14.5% are long.--- [1950-1959]: 80.0% non-blank (626,172), of which 11.2% are long.--- [1960-1969]: 79.4% non-blank (1,061,902), of which 10.2% are long.--- [1970-1979]: 78.6% non-blank (1,314,054), of which 11.3% are long.--- [1980-1989]: 79.7% non-blank (1,770,285), of which 10.4% are long.--- [1990-1999]: 86.1% non-blank (3,321,920), of which 10.5% are long.--- [2000-2009]: 89.8% non-blank (7,986,269), of which 9.8% are long.--- [2010-2019]: 92.4% non-blank (11,398,118), of which 9.3% are long.--- [Post-2019]: 84.5% non-blank (337), of which 10.4% are long.--- [????]: 84.3% non-blank (382,160), of which 7.7% are long.